The Current River is in the White River Basin watershed, which had received a National Blueways designation that was rescinded after weeks of controversy. / News-Leader file photo

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With a National Blueways designation officially off the table, conservation leaders in the White River Basin are considering the lessons to be learned.

The designation — which supporters insisted was nothing more than an award but detractors felt was overly broad and potentially harmful — was officially rescinded Wednesday after weeks of controversy.

“Never did I think it would get to this situation. Nor did anyone who was working together on the Blueways project,” said David Casaletto, the executive director of Ozarks Water Watch, a nonprofit with offices in Missouri and Arkansas.

Casaletto, a supporter of the project, acknowledged that the group responsible for the designation included only a fraction of the stakeholders that should have been involved. There were plans for listening sessions and more educational outreach, Casaletto said, but those plans didn’t materialize before controversy erupted.

“There hadn’t been time to bring everybody on board,” he said. “There was no one to talk in favor of it, because those people had never been organized.”

Landowners and other concerned citizens along the basin in Missouri and Arkansas caught wind of the designation, and without having been part of discussions or notified of the award beforehand, feared just what was being handed down from Washington.

“We know what’s happened in the past when the government gets involved,” said Forrest Wood, a former appointee to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and a strong voice against the Blueway designation in north central Arkansas.

“This is a typical case of the man showing up and saying, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” he said.

Wood argues that the designation — even if it was just an award, which he doubts — isn’t needed. Landowners and local conservationists have done a stellar job keeping up the White River Basin on their own.

“They’re trying to fix something that’s not broken,” he said, adding: “It’s something that doesn’t need to happen. About the last thing we need is another federal agency ... We have lots of agencies that tell us what to do already.”

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The project was further mired in confusion when calls to legislators resulted in no more information. Many local representatives said they had no previous knowledge of the project before constituents began calling.

The designation was issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior, not Congress or any other elected body, as a way to recognize the importance of the country’s waterways.

If the designation hadn’t been rescinded, it would’ve been the second in the country.

But opponents organized quickly and were joined by Reps. Billy Long, Vicky Hartzler and Jason Smith as well as Sen. Roy Blunt in Missouri; Reps. Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin, Steve Womack, Tom Cotton and Sen. John Boozeman in Arkansas. More recently, groups petitioned various county commissions and boards in both Arkansas and Missouri to oppose the designation.

During some of those county meetings, landowners referenced other federal projects that they felt violated personal land rights.

They also presented a line-by-line analysis of the application paperwork, which was full of generalities that opponents felt might open the door to additional unwanted federal oversight.

Casaletto, who himself didn’t know about the designation until after it was announced, at first was surprised by the idea that the application language created such concern among citizens along the basin.

He knows the Arkansas officials who wrote the application and says they had the best of intentions. But after people began raising concerns, he went back through the paperwork.

“They’re right,” Casaletto said. “There were cases where that wording was not clear.”

Leon Alexander, justice of the peace for district 11 in Baxter County, Ark., said he tried to keep his personal opinion out of the issue but found himself defending the Blueway designation at times.

“I wasn’t necessarily for it, but I sure wasn’t against it,” he said.

Alexander instead urged people concerned about the issue to learn more from the agencies involved about program’s benefits.

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But he said a large group of people had already made up their minds.

“I’ve never received as many phone calls or emails on something as I have on this,” he said. “This has gone from the logical, fact-finding efforts to an emotional response. That’s really what’s happened here.”

Casaletto was among some of the conservation leaders to agree that the designation needed to go away.

“If the public says, ‘Hey, let’s take a step back and do something different,’ that’s what we ought to do,” he said.

Casaletto, as well as Joe Pitts, the executive director of the James River Basin Partnership, and Greene County Commissioner Harold Bengsch all noted how well local water conservation projects have succeeded.

They feared that fighting for the Blueway designation would send the wrong message and erode that local trust.